DirectConnect hub shut down in Chile

Chilean police investigators with the help of IFPI Chile have shut down a DirectConnect hub in the country which housed millions of illegal MP3 files on user's hard drives. The "Metal Hub" required that users have 1GB of music files to share, quite a low figure as some DC hubs require hundreds of GBs to be shared to gain entry.

Local internet and physical anti-piracy teams worked together to identify the hub's location and owner. The hub owner and the ISP he was using received "cease and desist" letters informing them of the copyright infringements that resulted from their activity. With the advantage of having the identity and location of the operator revealed, the hub was down three days after these notifications were sent.

The action was part of the IFPI's Latin America strategy that is targeting P2P services. Several other DC hubs are being watched in Chile according to the IFPI. In the past year, several DirectConnect hubs have been targeted by anti-piracy investigators due to the typically large amount of illegal files being shared.